In recent years, diamond has become a preferred material for solid state microelectronic devices due to its favorable thermal, chemical and electronic properties such as negative electron affinity. Diamond is also regarded as the most promising material for field emitters, as well as for coatings for microfabricated field emission devices. Because of its well-established role in microprocessing technology, silicon remains a favored substrate material for fabricating field emission devices. It is desirable to deposit a thin diamond film on silicon emitter surfaces in order to enhance and stabilize the electron emission.
Field emission devices ("FEDs") generally employ an array of small electron-emitting cathodes. In contrast to cathode ray tubes ("CRTs"), FEDs do not operate by scanning. Several hundred cathodes activate the phosphors at each pixel. The cathodes are located directly below the pixel they serve, thereby allowing the thickness of the FED panel to be reduced to only several millimeters. In addition, while the CRT is a hot-cathode device, FEDs employ cold cathodes that produce electrons through room-temperature field emission.
In conventional field emitters, high operating voltages are required and, as a consequence, accidental discharge between neighboring pixels occasionally occurs. The present cesiated diamond film reduces the severity of this problem by reducing the operating voltage by a factor of 2.5 or greater.